Sun Moon and Venus

[Fraunhoffer]

I saw on space weather that a new sunspot cycle had started so I dusted off (literally) my little Bresser scope and found the (also dusty) solar filters to take a view.

Even at 1pm the sun was so low that it was about to slide behind the neighbours roof so it was all a bit hurried and I hoped that plonking the tripod on its white patio marks and levelling it up would be good enough to keep the sun more or less in track - which it did. Securely fixing the solar filter was followed by the usual farce of me trying to point the scope at the sun using its shadow and without looking at the sun. Eventually I got there and was pleased to find a small group of 3 sunspots. I had just a few moments to snap a photo off before the roofline started to eat into the solar disk.

As it looked like it might remain clear for the evening I covered the scope up and retired until the sun had set.
Venus started to become visible around 4 pm so hoping that the previous rather rough alignment was good enough I manually slewed around to find the bright planet. Using an 8mm ep revealed a nice crescent shape or about 2/3 illumination. The bright planet was ringed by a small amount of chromatic aberration and trying some coloured filters didn't seem to make that much difference. Like the sun, it quickly slipped behind the roofline, but it was nice to see it. I look forward to it rising higher and presenting more of a half illuminated shape in the coming days.

The moon had cleared the trees in the south east so I manually swung the scope over and switched the tracking rate on my Exos-2/Eq5 hybrid mount to lunar rate for some very pleasant early evening observing whilst it was high in the sky. As darkness fell, early this time of year I sketched the region around Mare Imbrium. The angle of the sun illuminated some of the lava lines very nicely and there seemed to be some radiating lines from a bright crater near the alpine valley this evening that I hadn't noticed before. It didn't look like that in my book so was probably a feature of that days illumination. I must get a decent lunar atlas. Plato was half illuminated and the sun was just tough some of the higher peaks on the terminator side.

It was time for supper so I covered the scope intending to return afterwards. Unfortunately some cloud had rolled in. After checking a bit later I called it a day, which was a bit of a shame as I had hoped to add some quadrantid meteors onto the nights list. Still it was a very pleasant opportunity to get out after so many weeks of rain.

 

 

[Stu]

Very nice report of a good session. I haven't seen the latest sunspot group yet so am looking forward to getting the chance.

Very nice sketch! The moon was looking fab last night wasn't it?